Facial Recognition Quotes

Nose, septum, lips, jaw, chin, other jaw—no element of his face was given short shrift, as if she were not his lover, but relied on a facial recognition program to identify him.

Too bad there wasn’t facial-recognition software out there to interpret mixed signals. I pulled out my phone to make a quick note to check into the concept and brainstorm commercial applications.

Until a short time ago facial recognition was a favourite example of something that even babies accomplish easily but which escaped even the most powerful computers. Today facial-recognition programs are able to identify people far more efficiently and quickly than humans can.

Second depressing finding: subliminal signaling of race also affects the fusiform face area, the cortical region that specializes in facial recognition.11 Damaging the fusiform, for example, selectively produces “face blindness” (aka prosopagnosia), an inability to recognize faces.

That is the palace's facial-recognition program chronicling everyone who entered the gala last night." Megan leans back and crosses her arms. She knows that we're impressed. She is impressed. And I have to admit she has every right to be.

Belisarius didn’t meet their eyes. In savant, meeting people’s eyes was like looking into a box of puzzle pieces, making the pattern recognition tendencies in his brain hyperactive, facial expressions swirling into cycles of false positives.

...this thing all the teenagers were doing that involved painting their faces like pixels, big squares of colour that were supposed to defeat the facial-recognition software but that had the side effect of making them look like deranged clowns.

I know that face. My heart is pounding, flooding with a swarm of emotion. A face with a scar across his right cheek. Battle scar, he calls it. A face that lures me closer, draws me into its dark pools of mystery and danger. A face I wish I'd never met.

Vending innovation isn't dead. Some machines use facial recognition software to guess which drink you're in the mood for (based mostly on your gender and the time of day, I was told). Iris and I always liked to stop at the machine on the Nakano Station platform that dispensed slushy iced drinks like cocoa-strawberry, matcha, and Ramune. (Ramune is a soda known for its unusual bottle, which has a glass marble in the neck, and for coming in various flavors like orange, red, and blue, all of which taste the same to me.)

Skilled readers are probably worse at identifying faces, since jury-rigging the relevant brain areas impinges on the fusiform gyrus, an area that specializes in face recognition. In fact, the well-established neurological asymmetry in face processing, favoring the right side of the brain, may be due to the effects of learning to read, which drives face processing out of the left side and shifts what it can to the right side.5 I was personally glad to hear this, as I now have an excuse for why I forget faces so often—I’ve recycled some of my facial recognition neuronal firmware to support my reading addiction.

Ellison, Gates, and the other members of this government/industry collaboration used the lockdown to accelerate construction of their 5G network54 of satellites, antennae, biometric facial recognition, and “track and trace” infrastructure that they, and their government and intelligence agency partners, can use to mine and monetize our data, further suppress dissent, to compel obedience to arbitrary dictates, and to manage the rage that comes as Americans finally wake up to the fact that this outlaw gang has stolen our democracy, our civil rights, our country, and our way of life—while we huddled in orchestrated fear from a flu-like virus.

Scalable Social Network Analysis. The SSNA would monitor telephone calls, conference calls, and ATM withdrawals, but it also sought to develop a far more invasive surveillance technology, one that could “capture human activities in surveillance environments.” The Activity Recognition and Monitoring program, or ARM, was modeled after England’s CCTV camera. Surveillance cameras would be set up across the nation, and through the ARM program, they would capture images of people as they went about their daily lives, then save these images to massive data storage banks for computers to examine. Using state-of-the-art facial recognition software, ARM would seek to identify who was behaving outside the computer’s pre-programmed threshold for “ordinary.” The parameters for “ordinary” remain classified.

If there is no positive facial recognition ID from surveillance footage, no phone or computer use, no credit card transactions—we can’t account for it.

Recognition is especially critical because most of our communication is nonverbal. This includes everything from facial expressions to body language to vocal tones—not the words but simply the way we say them. Words can lie or hide the truth. Physical gestures rarely do.

Learning to read forms specialized brain networks that influence our psychology across several different domains, including memory, visual processing, and facial recognition. Literacy changes people’s biology and psychology without altering the underlying genetic code. A society in which 95 percent of adults are highly literate would have, on average, thicker corpus callosa and worse facial recognition than a society in which only 5 percent of people are highly literate. These biological differences between populations will emerge even if the two groups were genetically indistinguishable. Literacy thus provides an example of how culture can change people biologically independent of any genetic differences.

Can you describe for me the tastes that you experienced as you said those words?" "Certainly. Mashed peas, dried apples, wine gum, weak tea, butter unsalted, Walkers crisps..."Mr. Roland replied. What I was experiencing at that moment wasn't an out-of-body experience. It was an in-another-body experience. Everything but this man and me had faded into darkness. He and I were at the two ends of a brightly lit tunnel. We were point A and point B. The tunnel was the most direct, straight-line route between the two points. I had never experienced recognition in this pure, undiluted form. It was a mirroring. It was a fact. It was a cord pulled taut between us. Most of all, it was no longer a secret. I don't remember getting up, but I must have. I do remember kneeling in front of the TV. I touched the image of Mr. Roland's face as his words jumped, swerved, coalesced, attacked, and revealed. As the interview continued, he became more comfortable with the interviewer, and his facial tics and rapid blinking lessened. He masked what he couldn't control by taking long sips from a glass of water (or perhaps the clear liquid was gin). He also turned his head slightly and coughed into his left hand, which provided him with a second or two of privacy. It soon became clear to Mr. Roland and to me that the interviewer wanted him to perform for the camera. After each question-and-answer exchange, the interviewer would ask him for the tastes of her words and then his. Mr. Roland was oddly obliging, much more so than I would have been in his position. I soon realized that his pool of experiential flavors, in other words his actual food intake, was very British and that he didn't venture far from home for his gastronomical needs. "Curry fries" was the most unusual taste that this piano tuner from Manchester listed. The word "employment" triggered it, he told the interviewer. I said "employment" aloud and tasted olives from a can, which meant I tasted more can than olives. I felt more than a tinge of envy.

Legal opposition and social protest have surfaced in relation to the digitalization of books,24 the collection of personal information through Street View’s Wi-Fi and camera capabilities,25 the capture of voice communications,26 the bypassing of privacy settings,27 the manipulation of search results,28 the extensive retention of search data,29 the tracking of smartphone location data,30 wearable technologies and facial-recognition capabilities,31 the secret collection of student data for commercial purposes,32 and the consolidation of user profiles across all Google’s services and devices,33 just to name several instances. Expect to see drones, body sensors, neurotransmitters, “digital assistants,” and other sensored devices on this list in the years to come.

and they wore thick white liner around their green eyes. Monti recognized the makeup as a way to avoid the cams the First Order employed. He noticed a white scarf coiled around their neck, big enough to pull up over mouth and nose, another facial recognition blocker.

but there was one thing not generally appreciated about the paranoid state. It was incredibly labour-intensive. There were simply not enough people to monitor all the cameras. Every shop had one, every bus and train and theatre and public convenience, every street and road and alleyway. Computers with facial recognition and gait recognition and body language recognition could do some of the job, but they were relatively simple to fool, expensive, and times had been hard for decades. It was cheaper to get people to watch the screens. But no nation on Earth had a security service large enough, a police force big enough, to keep an eye on all those live feeds. So it was contracted out. To private security firms all trying to undercut each other. The big stores had their own security men, but they were only interested in people going in and out of the store, not someone just passing by. So instead of a single all-seeing eye London’s seemingly-impregnable surveillance map was actually a patchwork of little territories and jurisdictions, and while they all had, by law, to make their footage available to the forces of law and order, many of the control rooms were actually manned by bored, underpaid, undertrained and badly-motivated immigrants.

Let’s follow the causal chain I’ve been linking together: the spread of a religious belief that every individual should read the Bible for themselves led to the diffusion of widespread literacy among both men and women, first in Europe and later across the globe. Broad-based literacy changed people’s brains and altered their cognitive abilities in domains related to memory, visual processing, facial recognition, numerical exactness, and problem-solving. It probably also indirectly altered family sizes, child health, and cognitive development, as mothers became increasingly literate and formally educated. These psychological and social changes may have fostered speedier innovation, new institutions, and—in the long run—greater economic prosperity.25

pulled all of this stuff up using the database at Fox. I freelance for them so they give me office space when I need it and access to their systems for research. They have an extremely sophisticated database and the ability to search using facial recognition technology.

SenseTime for facial recognition and iFlytek for speech recognition

while they talk a pro-immigration line in public, they are quietly aiding mass deportation schemes by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by developing and selling high-tech facial recognition and tracking technology.

She set the empty mug in front of him, his eyes never leaving her face. “There are lists, of course. And you and I both know they’re incomplete. Project OSIRIS has never been disclosed to the public.” “OSIRIS?” The surprise showed in her face and she cursed herself for it. He had taken her off-guard, once again—and he could tell. “Come on now, Mehr,” he replied, and there was almost a sadness in his dark eyes. Pain. “We’ve known each other too long for these games. We both know that after 7/7, your government began exploring the potential of installing a network of facial-recognition cameras around London. It was code-named Project OSIRIS, an allusion to the all-seeing eye of Egyptian mythology—and completed in 2012. I haven’t been in-country since, don’t know where any of them are located. It’s a risk I can’t afford to take. Not now.” “Why?” she asked quietly

Which meant gait metrics were unavailable, and facial recognition was notoriously bad at handling skin tones darker than a typical whitebread silicon valley bro. (It went all the way back to the color cards used to optimize photographic film stock for white-skinned targets in the 1950s: algorithms embodied the prejudices and biases of their designers.)

The COVID Reset The Great Reset focuses on five main progressive stages. The first is to remove and replace the dollar as the common global currency. The second strategy will be to initiate a cashless form of trade, used for both the selling and purchasing of products and services. This cashless system will eventually be a cyber or cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency would be one that the reset system chooses or creates, under the approval of the Global Monetary Fund and World Banks. The third step is to diminish the influence and social impact of the traditional Christian religions, both Protestantism and Catholicism, by enforcing rules of punishment for intolerance. Messages no longer permitted are any that teach same-sex marriage is wrong, abortion should be overturned, or any that counter the culture. In some states, laws are being presented to make it illegal for a minister to counsel anyone in the gay lifestyle, establishing that it is “impossible” to change. The progressives pick and choose their moral beliefs. Some go as far as wanting to legalize prostitution, lower the age a teen can consent to sex, and legalize illegal drugs. The fourth phase of this reset is to limit or control travel both domestically and internationally, using tracking chips, facial recognition, and other forms of A.I. technology. We have witnessed this with some airlines and nations, as they limit travel to anyone who has not taken the COVID vaccine. At this time, there are discussions that include everyone who travels across any state or national borders, or to and from a foreign nation, to have a special health chip implanted on their body, or have proof of being vaccinated by being a green passport carrier. It’s amazing how the Passport is green, just as politicians speak of a Green New Deal. The fifth phase is to form a New Order where borders are removed, but all movement is controlled by tracking devices using special Passports or a special, personal identity chip.

Information Collecting The Deep State is a surveillance state. China is the surveillance capital of the world. Their citizens are monitored and traced with cameras using facial recognition as well as through their iPhones. Collecting and monitoring personal information in the United States includes data from your laptop camera and microphone. If you can see and speak to another person using an iPhone, then high-tech equipment can see, hear, and record you. Although denied, Siri can listen in not only when you say, “Hey Siri,” but as long as the small box is turned on. The camera and microphone on your home computer can be remotely accessed. Even certain types of alarm systems and certain infant security cameras can be hacked, enabling a person to see into your home. It is interesting that the CEOs of computer companies often place dark tape over their camera and microphone.

Popular products from the tech boom— including violent and sexist video games that a generation of children has become addicted to—are designed with little to no input from women. Apple’s first version of its highly touted health application could track your blood-alcohol level but not menstruation. Everything from plus-sized smartphones to artificial hearts have been built at a size better suited to male anatomy. Facial recognition technology works far more accurately for white men than darker-skinned women. Social media platforms are hotbeds of online hate disproportionately targeted at girls and women, not simply because some humans are downright mean, but because of how men have designed the very systems that allow this hate to propagate. The exclusion of women matters—not just to job seekers, but to all of us.

She started up an app for the augmented reality glasses she and Shen Shi had been working on as a research project. It did real-time facial recognition of the people you looked at, comparing them to scrapes of social networking sites. Ninety percent of people in Shenzhen had social media accounts. It was a powerful way to view the people around you.

Now, data is democratizing, and American spy agencies are struggling to keep up. More than half the world is online,25 conducting five billion Google searches each day.26 Cell phone users are recording and posting events in real-time—turning everyone into intelligence collectors, whether they know it or not.27 Anyone with an Internet connection can access Google Earth satellite imagery, identify people using facial recognition software, and track events on Twitter.

the Communist Party of China (CCP) began its biggest-ever crackdown of its domestic gaming industry. Among several new policies was a prohibition on minors playing video games Monday through Thursday that also limited their play from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights (in other words, it was impossible for a minor to play a video game for more than three hours per week). In addition, companies such as Tencent would use their facial recognition software and a player’s national ID to periodically ensure that these rules were not being skirted by a gamer borrowing an older user’s device.

I tell them that the word “search” has meant a daring existential journey, not a finger tap to already existing answers; that “friend” is an embodied mystery that can be forged only face-to-face and heart-to-heart; and that “recognition” is the glimmer of homecoming we experience in our beloved’s face, not “facial recognition.” I say that it is not OK to have our best instincts for connection, empathy, and information exploited by a draconian quid pro quo that holds these goods hostage to the pervasive strip search of our lives. It is not OK for every move, emotion, utterance, and desire to be catalogued, manipulated, and then used to surreptitiously herd us through the future tense for the sake of someone else’s profit. “These things are brand-new,” I tell them. “They are unprecedented. You should not take them for granted because they are not OK.

The Role of Technology in Preventing and Solving Burglaries The world of crime and law enforcement has seen significant technological advancements in recent years. One area where technology has played a vital role is in preventing and solving burglaries. In this blog, we will explore the evolving role of technology in addressing burglary and the various ways it is employed by both law enforcement agencies and homeowners to combat this crime. 1. Home Security Systems One of the most visible and effective uses of technology in burglary prevention is home security systems. These systems often include surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and alarm systems. The ability to monitor and control these systems remotely through smartphone apps has given homeowners a valuable tool in protecting their property. 2. Smart Locks and Access Control Modern technology has given rise to smart locks and access control systems. Homeowners can now control and monitor access to their properties through smartphone apps. This technology allows for greater security and easier management of who enters your home, making it harder for burglars to gain unauthorized access. 3. Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Policing Law enforcement agencies are using artificial intelligence and data analysis to predict and prevent burglaries. By analyzing historical crime data, AI can identify patterns and hotspots, enabling police to allocate resources more effectively. Predictive policing can lead to faster response times and a more proactive approach to preventing burglaries. 4. Video Surveillance and Facial Recognition High-definition video surveillance and facial recognition technology have become powerful tools for both homeowners and law enforcement. Surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities can help identify and track potential suspects. This technology can aid in capturing clear images of burglars, making it easier to apprehend them. 5. Social Media and Digital Footprints Social media has become a valuable source of information for law enforcement. Burglars often inadvertently leave digital footprints, such as posts, photos, or location data, that can link them to crime scenes. Detectives can use these digital clues to build cases and identify suspects. 6. DNA Analysis and Forensics Advancements in DNA analysis and forensics have revolutionized the way burglary cases are investigated. DNA evidence can link suspects to crime scenes and help secure convictions. This technology has not only led to the solving of cold cases but also to the prevention of future crimes through the fear of leaving DNA evidence behind. 7. Community Apps and Reporting Many communities now use smartphone apps to report suspicious activities and communicate with neighbors. These apps have become effective in preventing burglaries through community engagement. They facilitate quick reporting of unusual incidents and can be a deterrent to potential burglars. Conclusion Technology has significantly improved the prevention and solving of burglaries. Homeowners now have access to advanced security systems, while law enforcement agencies use data analysis, surveillance, and forensics to track and apprehend suspects. The synergy between technology and law enforcement has made it increasingly challenging for burglars to operate undetected. As technology continues to advance, the fight against burglaries will only become more effective, ultimately making our communities safer.

In today’s world it’s easy to lose track of time & otherwise get caught up in what’s going on. So many families split up, so many loved ones Lose track of who they are. Why they came together. Divorcing a memory they can never truly run away from. In today’s world it’s a blessing to know you. To get facial recognition & assurance with your every smile. Not every moment can be as perfect as we expect it, Yet we are appreciative and try not to take the moment For granted. Just as the saying goes, “Not everyone knows what They have.” It’s those refreshing moments that remind us Of God’s praise. Not at all excusing us for the times we become Absentees when we’re needed most, or simply lose track Of time, there are so many things that factor into who we are,Our upbringing, things we experience, The shapeless void Of a missing father. While that effect is monumental, we respond without responding. Silence sometimes the most powerful form of toxicity In response to communication. In today’s world it’s not that uncommon, placing something else Instead as priority, forgetting the bigger if not biggest issue. For better or worse, the most memorable part of any union. We take it at face value forgetting that we’re all kids at some point Or another. It’s not impossible to revert back as we’re all human At the end of the day. That doesn’t at all excuse us for the times we aren’t present, not just for ourselves. But for our partners, our friends, our families the priority of accepting love as a walking and breathing testimony. Our hands the door of faith, as we journey to the alter our lips Have formed.In today’s world it’s a blessing to know you & to get facial recognition As well as reassurance every time I look at you. No matter how much we mumble or grumble. I am forever grateful to have met the love of my life. Everything I’ll ever need no matter how much time passes. You’re all I’ll ever need

After the shoplifting incident, the Shinola store gave a copy of its surveillance video to the Detroit police. Five months later, a digital image examiner for the Michigan State Police looked at the grainy, poorly lit surveillance video on her computer and took a screen shot.2 She uploaded it to the facial recognition software the police used: a $5.5 million program supplied by DataWorks Plus, a South Carolina firm founded in 2000 that began selling facial recognition software developed by outside vendors in 2005. The system accepted the photo; scanned the image for shapes, indicating eyes, nose, and mouth; and set markers at the edges of each shape. Then, it measured the distance between the markers and stored that information. Next, it checked the measurements against the State Network of Agency Photos (SNAP) database, which includes mug shots, sex offender registry photographs, driver’s license photos, and state ID photos. To give an idea of the scale, in 2017, this database had 8 million criminal photos and 32 million DMV photos. Almost every Michigan adult was represented in the database.

In a recent article, Zuboff exposes this hoax of free services in her powerful voice: We celebrated the new digital services as free, but now we see that the surveillance capitalists behind those services regard us as the free commodity. We thought that we search Google, but now we understand that Google searches us. We assumed that we use social media to connect, but we learned that connection is how social media uses us. …We’ve begun to understand that “privacy” policies are actually surveillance policies.… The Financial Times reported that a Microsoft facial recognition training database of 10 million images plucked from the internet without anyone’s knowledge and supposedly limited to academic research was employed by companies like IBM and state agencies that included the United States and Chinese military.… ….Privacy is not private, because the effectiveness of these and other private or public surveillance and control systems depends upon the pieces of ourselves that we give up—or that are secretly stolen from us.5 The private flow of data from consumer to machine also promotes the transfer of human agency from humans to machines. The data that surveillance companies capture is their source of power and is the fuel for the new economy of trillions of dollars. Zuboff has called this a “bloodless coup from above” and warns of a growing gap between “what we know and what is known about us”.6 By figuring out the cognitive comfort zones for individuals, AI-driven systems can deliver emotional and psychological needs, thus gradually

AnyVision so impressed Microsoft that the Seattle software giant briefly invested US$74 million in the company in 2019 before facing a massive backlash. It cut its ties with AnyVision in 2020 due to pressure from the “Palestinian lobby on the Democratic Party,” according to the former head of Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency, though it continues to develop its own facial recognition technology.

The system is most extreme in the city of Hebron, where facial recognition and numerous cameras are used to monitor Palestinians, including at times in their homes, instead of the extreme Jewish settlers living there, who routinely express genocidal threats against the Palestinians. The IDF claimed that the program was designed to “improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population.

Biometric facial recognition is a growth industry estimated to be worth US$11.6 billion globally by 2026.

Several figures wearing light scattering masks designed to defeat facial-recognition algorithm stormed about. Some toted phase EMP carronades. The international district of Indianapolis was once the side of town that suffered from benign neglect of city officials. Property values plummeted, money enough to rebrand the area and immigrants moved in. And flourished. Through LISC, the city found money enough to rebrand the area the International District. This grew into the international marketplace, which soon housed several embassies once the nation’s capital shifted to the booming metropolis.

Between 2017 and 2020, the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone plans to put at least 3 billion RMB (around $450 million) into AI development. That money will go toward a dizzying array of AI subsidies and perks, including investments of up to 15 million RMB in local companies, grants of 1 million RMB per company to attract talent, rebates on research expenses of up to 5 million RMB, creation of an AI training institute, government contracts for facial recognition and autonomous robot technology, simplified procedures for registering a company, seed funding and office space for military veterans, free company shuttles, coveted spots at local schools for the children of company executives, and special apartments for employees of AI startups.

Chinese and American companies have already kick-started this process, leaping out to massive leads over the rest of the world. Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and a few other countries play host to top-notch talent and research labs, but they often lack the other ingredients needed to become true AI superpowers: a large base of users and a vibrant entrepreneurial and venture-capital ecosystem. Other than London’s DeepMind, we have yet to see groundbreaking AI companies emerge from these countries. All of the seven AI giants and an overwhelming portion of the best AI engineers are already concentrated in the United States and China. They are building huge stores of data that are feeding into a variety of different product verticals, such as self-driving cars, language translation, autonomous drones, facial recognition, natural-language processing, and much more. The more data these companies accumulate, the harder it will be for companies in any other countries to ever compete.

It means the faction found us.” He looks around again. “How?” “How the fuck do I know? Spy satellites? Facial recognition pigeons on the freeway signs? Ballerinas with Uzis? What does it matter? Just hit the fucking accelerator.

As the pictures appeared on the screen, Vanessa glanced at the live footage from the CCTV cameras installed around Nightbird. Five minutes ago, she’d finished the installation of facial recognition software on the computer and had it set up to recognize vampire Sally Hawley among the guests, in case she’d show up.

He did have some small advantage, though. He knew the truth about surveillance. Ever since the dawn of GWOT the nations of the West – apart from the United States, where civil libertarians tended to carry rifles and use them on closed-circuit cameras as an expression of their freedoms – had put their faith in creating a paranoid state, one where every move of every citizen was recorded and logged and filmed and fuck you, if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about. Whether this had had any great influence in the course of GWOT was a moot point, but there was one thing not generally appreciated about the paranoid state. It was incredibly labour-intensive. There were simply not enough people to monitor all the cameras. Every shop had one, every bus and train and theatre and public convenience, every street and road and alleyway. Computers with facial recognition and gait recognition and body language recognition could do some of the job, but they were relatively simple to fool, expensive, and times had been hard for decades. It was cheaper to get people to watch the screens. But no nation on Earth had a security service large enough, a police force big enough, to keep an eye on all those live feeds. So it was contracted out. To private security firms all trying to undercut each other. The big stores had their own security men, but they were only interested in people going in and out of the store, not someone just passing by. So instead of a single all-seeing eye London’s seemingly-impregnable surveillance map was actually a patchwork of little territories and jurisdictions, and while they all had, by law, to make their footage available to the forces of law and order, many of the control rooms were actually manned by bored, underpaid, undertrained and badly-motivated immigrants.

It isn’t just Israel selling defence equipment to Myanmar. Beijing has sold facial recognition technology to the junta and it has been installed across the country to monitor the population.

AnyVision is shy about admitting its true role in the West Bank, but digging by NBC News uncovered a project, called Google Ayosh, targeting all Palestinians with the use of big data. AnyVision continues to use the occupation as a vital source to train its systems in the mass surveillance of Palestinians, focusing, it says, on attempts to stop any Palestinian attackers.43 AnyVision is a global company that operates in over forty countries, including Russia, China (Hong Kong), and the US, and in countless locations such as casinos, manufacturing, and even fitness centers. The company changed its name to Oosto in late 2021, and raised US$235 million that year to further develop its AI-enabled surveillance tools. The former head of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, is an advisor and it is staffed by Israel’s intelligence Unit 8200 veterans. It promotes itself as building a world “safer through visual intelligence.” AnyVision so impressed Microsoft that the Seattle software giant briefly invested US$74 million in the company in 2019 before facing a massive backlash. It cut its ties with AnyVision in 2020 due to pressure from the “Palestinian lobby on the Democratic Party,” according to the former head of Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency, though it continues to develop its own facial recognition technology.44 The former Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki worked for AnyVision as a “crisis communications consultant” and earned at least US$5,000 at some point between leaving the Obama administration in 2017 and starting in the Biden White House.

AnyVision was not the only company implementing such AI technologies. Biometric facial recognition is a growth industry estimated to be worth US$11.6 billion globally by 2026. Cor-sight AI is a part Israeli-owned facial recognition company that works with the notoriously brutal police departments in Mexico and Brazil and the Israeli government.46 A former Israeli army colonel, Dany Tirza, partnered with Corsight AI to develop a police body camera that could immediately identify an individual in crowds, even if their face was covered, and match the person to photographs from years before. Tirza lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Kfar Adumim and is one of the key architects of the Israeli separation wall that creeps through the West Bank. He supports facial recognition technology at Israeli checkpoints because it reduces “friction” between the IDF and Palestinians.47 The IDF uses extensive facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and mobile phones to document every Palestinian in the West Bank. Starting in 2019, Israeli soldiers used the Blue Wolf app to capture Palestinian faces, which were then compared to a massive database of images dubbed the “Facebook for Palestinians.” Soldiers were told to compete by taking the most photos of Palestinians and the most prolific would win prizes.

Many Palestinians are unaware of how the occupation has been privatized because it makes no difference if a state officer or private individual harasses or humiliates them. Neither entity is accountable to those over whom they rule. I saw this constantly when working and traveling across the West Bank beginning in 2005. Many checkpoints through which Palestinians are forced to travel to access their schools, workplaces, or Israel if they are fortunate enough to get one of the few work permits handed out by the Jewish state, use facial recognition technology and biometric details to document their every move.

Meanwhile, privatization of the occupation is gathering speed. AnyVision is an Israeli start-up that secretly monitors Palestinians across the West Bank with a range of cameras, the locations of which are not acknowledged by the company or Israel. Artificial intelligence thus merges with biometrics and facial recognition at dozens of Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank. AnyVision claims that its technology does not discriminate on the basis of race or gender and that it creates only “ethical” products. When asked by NBC News in 2019 about its work in the West Bank, CEO Eylon Etshtein initially threatened to sue them, denied there even was an occupation, and accused the NBC reporter of being paid by Palestinian activists.42 He later apologized for the outburst.

The Flower’s greatest champion, when all was said and done, would prove to be the German professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, the same scholar who put forth the theory the Droeshout might have been copied from a death mask. In 2002 Hammerschmidt-Hummel had just completed a six-year research project with the German FBI and a Justice League team of scientists that attempted to employ crime-solving facial-recognition technology to establish the consistencies of facial features within a select number of accepted images of William Shakespeare. Her study would eventually lead her to make some interesting accusations, one of which involved portrait switchery.